She took his hand. “Good-bye, zur,” she whispered, turning away, flushed.
“Good-bye!”
The doctor went out, with a new mark upon him; and I followed, still silent, thinking it a poor farewell my sister had given him, but yet divining, serenely, that all this was beyond the knowledge of lads. I did not know, when I bade the doctor farewell and Godspeed, that his heart tasted such bitterness as, God grant! the hearts of men do seldom feel, and that, nobility asserting itself, he had determined never again to return: fearing to bring my sister the unhappiness of love, rather than the joy of it. When I had put him safe aboard, I went back to the house, where I found my sister sorely weeping—not for herself, she sobbed, but for him, whom she had wounded.
XVIII
SKIPPER TOMMY GETS A LETTER
It came from the north, addressed, in pale, sprawling characters, to Skipper Tommy Lovejoy of our harbour—a crumpled, greasy, ill-odoured missive: little enough like a letter from a lady, bearing (as we supposed) a coy appeal to the tender passion. But———
“Ay, Davy,” my sister insisted. “’Tis from she. Smell it for yourself.”
I sniffed the letter.